Construction of the new Montreal Holocaust Museum begins with budgets increased by 50% at a time when hatred towards Jews is spiraling again around the world, fueled by the Israeli-Palestinian armed conflict. The program of this place of memory will be adjusted to take this into account. “The Museum will have to become much more active on the issue of anti-Semitism, even though it was initially designed to deal with history and memory,” summarizes the director of the establishment.
The project to move the Montreal Holocaust Museum is being maintained, with budgets revised upwards which have forced the establishment to ask for even more efforts from patrons. Excavation work for the new building at 3535 Saint-Laurent Boulevard has begun. The construction site should be completed towards the end of 2025 and management hopes to have the new building inaugurated no later than July 2026.
The accounts of the whole have been revised to cope with inflation and rising construction costs. The projected total increased from 80 million to more than 120 million, with 25 million reserved for the endowment fund. The costs of the project itself, initially estimated at 30 million, have now doubled.
“Prices have soared, but we are privileged: donors have been there to help us more,” summarizes Daniel Amar, director of the Holocaust Museum since 2019. The Azrieli Foundation, pillar of the project, will provide 10 million more, for a total of 25 million. Polish-born patron David Azrieli, who fled and fought the Nazis, made his fortune as a real estate developer in Montreal, his adopted city after World War II.
Five other patrons together provided more than 10 million. Around fifteen other donations exceed a million each. “We are in permanent fundraising,” says Mr. Amar.
He estimates that 85% of financial support comes from the Jewish community. By comparison, the approximately equivalent budget of the new Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal (set at 116.5 million for the moment) only plans to raise 20 million in donations by passing the hat in the business world and with the audience.
The federal government added 5 million to its subsidy and the director hopes that Quebec will do the same with its own envelope of 20 million, just like the City of Montreal, which he is asking to increase its participation.
Nothing new under the sun
This new departure for the place of memory on anti-Semitism from yesterday to today occurs in a context of renewed discrimination against Jews. The war in Gaza, triggered by the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, has amplified anti-Semitic acts. They have since increased by 1000% in France and 360% in the United States. They have doubled in Canada.
Words meet actions, sometimes even on busy campuses. In The dutyrecently, the philosopher Pascal Bruckner noted that the coming out The most massive Judeophobia of recent years is now growing, especially on the far left. He underlined the loss of sense of reality which is now causing talk of genocide in Gaza. War crimes, perhaps, but genocide? The International Criminal Court is studying the issue.
“If the word multiplies indiscriminately, it risks losing relevance, and no one will take [la situation] seriously when a real genocide takes place, said the philosopher. Between a simple crime and a genocide, there is a whole range of distinctions, which are undoubtedly unbearable for the victims, but which exist and must be studied very carefully. »
The Holocaust Museum receives hateful comments, and the director says staff are feeling worried. Visitors inquire about the security conditions of the building before a visit. The new building on Saint-Laurent Boulevard is designed accordingly, with armored windows and protective bollards around the building.
“The new museum will offer an attempt to answer the question “Why hatred of Jews?” explains the assistant director, Audrey Licop. This will lead us to deal with the anti-Semitism that continues. For example, we can show that anti-Semitic caricatures from the beginning of the 20th centurye century resemble those of today. »
“We are facing a phenomenon of a structural nature,” continues director Amar. The discourse and the form change, but anti-Semitism remains. The Museum will have to become much more active on the issue of anti-Semitism, even though it was initially designed to deal with history and memory. »
A time for everything
After Tel Aviv and New York, Montreal is the city that received the largest number of survivors of the destruction of Europe’s Jews organized between 1933 and 1945. Around 9,000 survivors settled there in the years following the end of the Second World War. In 1950, this community of witnesses, including several concentration camp survivors, represented between 20 and 25% of Montreal Jews.
The Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center was founded in 1979 with the agreement of members of the Association of Survivors of Nazi Oppression. The rooms on Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine were renovated in 2003 and the Center became the Holocaust Museum in 2016. The project to install it on the Handin the historic district of immigration, and Jewish immigration in particular, was born the following year.
The KPMB + Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker Architecture consortium won, against 31 other firms, the international architectural competition which ended in the summer of 2022. The pictorial proposal shows five white blocks, glazed at their base, arranged in a staggered row, separated by linear skylights and a memory wall. The museum will include spaces for permanent and temporary exhibitions, a youth zone, a room dedicated to interactive hologram testimonies, classrooms, an auditorium, a commemorative garden and a work from the art to culture interaction program. ‘architecture.
The Museum’s mission is to provide information on “the Holocaust, as well as anti-Semitism, racism, hatred and indifference.” The establishment’s collection brings together approximately 13,500 artifacts, identity papers, letters, photos, works of art, prisoners’ clothing, etc. More than 900 testimonies from survivors allow us to reconstruct life before the war and under occupation, deportations, ghettos, clandestinity, resistance, liberation and finally immigration to Canada and arrival in Montreal.
The conservation and design teams are busy planning permanent and temporary exhibitions. They are helped by the Dutch historian Robert Jan van Pelt, a specialist in Auschwitz. “We are working to achieve an understanding of what the Holocaust was and what its consequences were for institutions, individuals and their loved ones,” summarizes Audrey Licop, deputy director general.
The establishment already receives around 25,000 visitors per year, half of which are students. The director hopes to triple attendance in his new premises and specifies that this projection is “very conservative”.